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News

Mon. 05 September 2022

Costliest squads: City ahead of local rivals United

Issue number 387 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post ranks big-5 league teams according to transfer fees invested to sign their current squad members. Manchester City heads the rankings closely followed by local rivals Manchester United. Chelsea completes an all-English podium, while Paris St-Germain tops the table for non-Premier League teams.

The Manchester teams are the only clubs worldwide with a transfer fee spending to assemble the squad greater than one billion euro (including add-ons irrespective of their effective payment). Real Madrid (€721M) has the costliest squad in the Spanish Liga, Bayern Munich (€499M) in the German Bundesliga and Juventus (€473M) in the Italian Serie A. The data for 2020/21 is available here.

The freshly released CIES Football Observatory September’s Monthly Report presents further financial analysis of big-5 league transfers. It notably shows that Manchester United tops the table for the most negative net transfer spending over the last decade (-€1.27 billion), ahead of Manchester City (€902M) and Paris St-Germain (€868M).

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